Short Stories

ARTICLES ABOUT SHORT STORIES BY DATE - PAGE 4

The "Significant Objects" project posed a simple question: Can a great story transform a worthless trinket into a significant object? The answer — a resounding yes — is expressed in these stories about the flotsam and jetsam of life, cast away in thrift stores, yard sales and flea markets. The authors recruited wonderful storytellers to imagine the importance of all sorts of wacky stuff through short stories: Curtis Sittenfeld tells of a marriage through a figurine of spotted dogs; Kurt Andersen explains the importance of a Santa nutcracker to an Indiana boy. The handsome volume is more than a collection of heartbreaking and funny short stories with beautifully photographed objects: The authors listed each object for auction on eBay, included its invented story, with a starting price of the object's original cost.

The "Significant Objects" project posed a simple question: Can a great story transform a worthless trinket into a significant object? The answer - a resounding yes - is expressed in these stories about the flotsam and jetsam of life, cast away in thrift stores, yard sales and flea markets. The authors recruited wonderful storytellers to imagine the importance of all sorts of wacky stuff through short stories: Curtis Sittenfeld tells of a marriage through a figurine of spotted dogs; Kurt Andersen explains the importance of a Santa nutcracker to an Indiana boy. The handsome volume is more than a collection of heartbreaking and funny short stories with beautifully photographed objects: The authors listed each object for auction on eBay, included its invented story, with a starting price of the object's original cost.

Fun things to do in and around Geneva starting April 4 | April 4, 2013

Caroline Kennedy at Pfeiffer Hall on April 4 Caroline Kennedy returns to Naperville this spring for her much-anticipated children's poetry collection, "Poems to Learn by Heart. " As children, both Caroline and her brother, John, learned poems to recite to their parents and grandparents. Kennedy will visit Pfeiffer Hall, 310 E. Benton Ave., on the campus of North Central College on Thursday, April 4 in Naperville at 7 p.m. Tickets are required and available, while they last, from Anderson's Bookshop, 123 W. Jefferson Ave., in Naperville, or by calling 630-355-2665.

Aleksandar Hemon landed in the United States two decades ago, January 1992. He was 27, a young Bosnian journalist from Sarajevo arriving on a one-month visa, arranged through a cultural exchange program sponsored by the State Department. Just after he arrived, war broke out in Yugoslavia. Hemon was stranded. In the years since, as he settled into this country and became an acclaimed writer - became one of Chicago's finest contemporary writers and arguably its most important literary talent since Saul Bellow - Hemon has told this immigration story many, many times.

Apparently, we're in them midst of a short story boomlet. I know this because The New York Times told me so in a recent article, "Good Fit for Today's Little Screens: Short Stories. " I tend to put little trust in trend pieces. If I believed every trend piece, back in the '90s, I would've cashed in my first 401(k) and invested the proceeds entirely in Beanie Babies. If I'd gotten onboard the unstoppable real estate boom, I'd at least have plenty of empty houses in which to store them, at least until foreclosure came.

In the prologue to his beloved 1945 novel "Cannery Row," author John Steinbeck supplies a colorful description of the people of Cannery Row, a street lined with sardine canneries in Monterey, Calif., during the Great Depression: "Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, 'whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,' by which he meant everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, 'saints and angels and martyrs and holymen,' and he would have meant the same thing.

On a recent January night, about 100 people gathered in the Tribune Tower to discuss the art of the short story and to kick off the 2013 Nelson Algren Short Story Award contest. Five Algren Award winners - David Michael Kaplan, Joe Meno, Billy Lombardo, Baird Harper and Jeremy T. Wilson - read and dissected the opening paragraphs of their award-winning pieces. The writers educated audience members about place, intent, character, setting and the tenuous balance between humor and drama.

A Storify gallery of a fun evening in the Tribune Tower, as witnessed by our visitors. Heads up: This gallery is running nicely for me in Firefox and Chrome, but not in Internet Explorer. Trying to find a fix here on our web staff. Meanwhile, anybody have a fix they can suggest? [ View the story "The 2013 Algren Awards, and a celebration of short stories" on Storify ] The 2013 Algren Awards, and a celebration of short stories In the midst of our Jan. 23 Algren Awards celebration of short story writing, we noticed Frank Tempone's tweets.